Suchergebnisse

In 1896, an obscure out-of-office politician rose to prominence and the Democratic presidential nomination on the basis of a rousing speech condemning the gold standard. Working up to the conclusion of that oratory, William Jennings Bryan claimed: "the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country (Bryan 1967)." ; PR ; IFPRI1; Globalization, Market and Trade Policy; nobio ; DGO

On almost any street corner in Cairo one can buy a tamaya orfalafel sandwich for a few cents. This daily fare is a microcosm of the government's involvement in food pricing. The fava beans in the sandwich are subsidized. The oil in which they are fried is subsidized. The bread is subsidized. The tea one might have with the sandwich is subsidized, as is the sugar used to sweeten it. Furthermore, the sandwich will probably be wrapped in a newspaper that is likely to contain a speech or an editorial on the subsidy system. ; PR ; IFPRI1 ; DGO

The effect of government policies on poor people's food consumption and nutrition is determined largely by the resulting changes in incomes and prices and the response of the poor to such changes. Although responses of the poor to changes in income as measured by income elasticities of demand for food commodities have been estimated for a long time, few estimates of the responses of the poor specifically to price changes were available until the mid 1970s. During the last 10 years, however, a number of such estimates have been made using a variety of methods. the purpose has been to estimate how changes in the prices of various food commodities affect food consumption by the poor as compared with the population at large ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; Hunger

This note reports a modification of one use of the translog production function reported by Binswanger (1973, 1978). The method employed in this study recognizes that changes in factor shares over time are affected by a variety of decision variables including research and extension. In addition, some of the changes attributed to technical change may in fact be due to a change in the resource environment the individual decision maker faces, including the stock of public goods infrastructure. The study also investigates shifts in technological change which may be attributed to changes in the political climate." -- Author's Abstract ; ISI; IFPRI3 ; PR

IFPRI3; ISI; CRP2; B.1 Integrated Agriculture, Nutrition, and Health Programs and Policies; E Building Resilience ; PHND; PIM ; PR ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

The pathways from economic and social policies to improved food security and nutrition for the poor often are not well understood. Yet each day governments decide on policies that ultimately affect their well-being. How households increase their incomes, acquire food, improve health, or cope with insecurity are important concerns that need to be examined in order to devise policies to help eradicate poverty. Nearly all attempts to study these issues have used snapshot approaches--those that look at one point in time. These approaches are limited in that they do not reveal anything about the actual dynamics of poverty, food security, and their consequences for nutrition and health. In this report Harold Alderman and Marito Garcia address these concerns by looking at longitudinal data for a three-year period, 1986-89, and analyzing fluctuations in incomes, consumption, savings, nutrition and health-seeking behavior of 800 households in five districts in rural Pakistan (Faisalabad and Attock in Punjab province, Badin in Sind, Dir in North-West Frontier Province, and Mastung/Kalat in Baluchistan). The report examines income sources and wage formation in rural Pakistan and investigates the level and distribution of income in poor households. It contributes to analysis of the temporal dimensions of poverty and thus adds to the literature on coping strategies of households. Although the three-year panel of data analyzed is too short to model fully the dynamics of poverty, it is sufficient to indicate the fluidity of the economic environment that households in Pakistan face. The report also traces the efficiency by which household incomes are converted to better nutritional well-being and the influence of other intervening factors such as health and education. ; PR ; IFPRI1

Malnutrition affects millions of people in developing countries; it affects preschool-aged children and pregnant and lactating women acutely. In the long run, most policymakers would agree that the elimination of poverty is the most effective way of dealing with protein-calorie malnutrition. In the short run, however, governments and international institutions have pursued a variety of intervention strategies in the hope of alleviating malnutrition. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1

PR ; IFPRI1; Farm and Household Economics; Economic Reforms, Aid, Governance and Strategy

There is limited experimental evidence on the effects of large-scale, government-led interventions on human capital in resource-constrained settings. We report results from a randomized trial of the government of Ghana's school feeding. After two years, the program led to moderate average increases in math and literacy standardized scores among pupils in treatment communities, and to larger achievement gains for girls and disadvantaged children and regions. Improvements in child schooling, cognition, and nutrition constituted suggestive impact mechanisms, especially for educationally-disadvantaged groups. The program combined equitable human capital accumulation with social protection, contributing to the "learning for all" sustainable development agenda.

There is very limited experimental evidence of the impact of large-scale, government-led school meals programs on child educational achievements in Sub-Saharan Africa. We address this gap by reporting treatment effects from a nationwide randomized trial of the Government of Ghana's school feeding program (GSFP) on children's math and literacy, cognition (problem-solving ability and working memory), and composite scores of overall attainments. Based on the government's plans to re-target and scale up the GSFP, food insecure schools and related communities across the country were randomly assigned to school feeding. After two years of implementation, program availability led to moderate increases in test scores for the average pupil in school catchment areas, ranging between 0.12 and 0.16 standard deviations. Analysis focusing on per-protocol population subgroups unveiled substantial heterogeneity: school feeding led to remarkable learning and cognitive gains for girls, poorest children, and children from the northern regions. Program effects were at least twice as large as for the average child. Increases in enrolment, grade attainment, and shifts in time use toward schooling time constituted potential mechanisms for impact. We conclude the program combined social protection with equitable human capital accumulation, thus contributing to the imperative of "learning for all" set in the Sustainable Development Goals. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; DCA; Capacity Strengthening ; PHND

There is limited experimental evidence on the effects of large-scale, government-led interventions on human capital in resource-constrained settings. We report results from a randomized trial of the government of Ghana's school feeding. After two years, the program led to moderate average increases in math and literacy standardized scores among pupils in treatment communities, and to larger achievement gains for girls and disadvantaged children and regions. Improvements in child schooling, cognition, and nutrition constituted suggestive impact mechanisms, especially for educationally-disadvantaged groups. The program combined equitable human capital accumulation with social protection, contributing to the "learning for all" sustainable development agenda. ; PR ; IFPRI3; ISI; DCA; CRP2; CRP4; 2 Promoting Healthy Diets and Nutrition for all; 5 Strengthening Institutions and Governance ; PHND; PIM; A4NH ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM); CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH)

Almost every country in the world has a national school feeding program to provide daily snacks or meals to school-attending children and adolescents. The interven- tions reach an estimated 368 million children and ado- lescents globally. The total investment in the intervention is projected to be as much as US$75 billion annually (WFP 2013), largely from government budgets. School feeding may contribute to multiple objectives, including social safety nets, education, nutrition, health, and local agriculture. Its contribution to education objectives is well recognized and documented, while its role as a social safety net was underscored following the food and fuel crises of 2007 and 2008 (Bundy and others 2009). In terms of health and nutrition, school feeding contributes to the continuum of development by build- ing on investments made earlier in the life course, including maternal and infant health interventions and early child development interventions (see chapter 7 in this volume, Alderman and others 2017). School feeding may also help leverage global efforts to enhance the inclusiveness of education for out-of-school children, adolescent girls, and disabled persons, as called for in the Sustainable Development Goals (see chapter 17 in this volume, Graham and others 2017). Although the Disease Control Priorities series focuses on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), evidence from high-income countries (HICs) is included because of the near universality of school feeding and the insights that inclusion can provide as economies develop. For example, the design of school feeding in countries under- going the nutrition transition 1 may provide some lessons on how to shift from providing access to sufficient calo- ries to promoting healthful diets and dietary behaviors for children and adolescents (WFP 2013). Agricultural development has increasingly gained attention. It is clear that to enable the transition to sus- tainable, scalable government-run programs, the inclu- sion of the agricultural sector is essential (Bundy and others 2009; Drake and others 2016). Accounting for the full benefits of school feeding through cost- effectiveness and benefit-cost analysis is challenging, similar to other complex interventions, but undertaking this accounting is critical for assessing the tradeoffs with competing investments. This chapter reviews the evidence about how school feeding meets these objectives and provides some indi- cation of costs in relation to benefits. The costs of the intervention are well established; estimates that encompass all the benefits of school feeding are more challenging. The benefits must be quantified and translated to the same unit to allow for aggregation. Moreover, how school feeding interventions are designed and implemented varies significantly across countries. Given that delivery of school feeding often involves multiple sectors, common policy frameworks and cross-sectoral coordination are required to achieve maximum benefit (Bundy and others 2009). Several other chapters in the volume highlight school feeding. These include chapter 11 (Lassi, Moin, and Bhutta 2017), chapter 20 (Bundy and others 2017), chapter 22 (Plaut and others 2017), and chapter 25 (Fernandes and Aurino 2017).

The Strengthen PSNP4 Institutions and Resilience (SPIR) Development Food Security Activity (DFSA) in Ethiopia is a five-year project (2016-2021) supporting implementation of the fourth phase of the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP4) as well as providing complementary livelihood, nutrition, gender and climate resilience activities to strengthen the program and expand its impacts. The main objectives of SPIR are to enhance livelihoods, increase resilience to shocks, and improve food security and nutrition for rural households vulnerable to food insecurity. Activities under SPIR are organized into four Purposes: 1) livelihoods, 2) nutrition, 3) women's and youth empowerment, and 4) climate resilience. Across these Purposes, SPIR provides community-level programming, training of government staff involved in public service delivery at the woreda (district) and kebele (subdistrict) level, and targeted livelihood transfers. IFPRI is conducting an experimental, quantitative impact evaluation of SPIR designed to measure the causal impact of multisectoral "graduation model" packages of livelihoods, nutrition, gender equity, and mental health interventions for improving outcomes in several domains, including livelihoods, food security, child nutrition, women's empowerment, mental health, and intimate partner violence (IPV). The impact evaluation uses a clustered randomized controlled trial (RCT) design with four intervention arms (three treatments and a control group) to test the relative effectiveness of these packages of interventions to improve outcomes for PSNP4 beneficiaries. This endline report of the impact evaluation presents evidence on the impact of three combinations of packages of core or enhanced gender-sensitive livelihood and nutrition activities on all primary and secondary outcomes for the evaluation after three years of implementation.1 The endline survey for the impact evaluation was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic from mid-2020 and was conducted in February and April 2021, during which time a total of 3,812 households were interviewed out of the target of 3,996 households for the entire study sample. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI5; CRP2; SPIR ; PHND; PIM ; 218 pages ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

Governments and international development partners investing over $40 USD billion a year in school meals have shown interest in linking these programs with agriculture sector development, through what has become known as "Home-Grown" school feeding (HGSF). Nevertheless, evidence on the effectiveness of HGSF and agriculture is limited. This article reports on the findings of a three-year cluster randomized trial implemented in 58 districts of Ghana including a panel of 1,668 households. Communities were randomly assigned to 1) standard school meals; 2) HGSF or 3) control with no intervention. Post-intervention, the caterer-level analysis highlighted major challenges related to delayed program disbursements, resulting in a mismatch between budgeted and actual caterer outlay on food purchases per pupil equivalent to approximately 50% of the budgeted per child per day allocation. For caterers, by far the largest procurement channel was through traders, though there is evidence that HGSF may have increased the share of value purchased directly from smallholders. We find no strong evidence that the school feeding program or HGSF affected smallholders market structure, farm, non-farm and household income. When interpreting these null results, it is important to consider the findings of two parallel studies that showed positive effects of this national program on school children's learning, cognition, and nutrition outcomes. The national program can still be considered as an effective social protection strategy with multiple objectives, even if the agriculture objectives remain aspirational. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; DCA; CRP4 ; PHND; A4NH ; CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH)